Chapter Text
There’s a pressure -intense and throbbing- that wakes Maly.
Before she rouses, there is one brief moment where she hasn’t yet drawn a breath. For that fraction of a second, she is free from weight. The weight of her blood insistently beating in time with her heart; the weight of her stale, pond water stinking clothes smother her dirty skin, the weight of her own flesh pressing down against her own bones, squeezing the soul out of the confines of biological material.
In that pinpoint, less-than-a-hairs-width moment, she is unburdened. She spins free of the sense of what needs to be done and what has happened. There are no aches, no chronic pains, no sluggish and jumbled thoughts.
But as the air rushes inward, she becomes aware of it all again. Her bones become inking stones, her skin itching and rough, her clothes cloistering warm. Her thoughts struggle and churn as they begin to account for where she is and what happened, and her hands hurt from the movement of the air on her raw blisters. A shooting pressure that is too hot and too swollen makes itself known on her face.
She forces the air outward, long and pained, through her nose, turning to her side and opening her eyes.
Well, eye.
Through the slit of the only one she can pry open, the world is sideways. Grass grows from rocky soil, hyper-detailed this close. She can see every xylum, every line on the stalks shooting upward towards the sun and every node next to the budding stems. A line of ants trickles slowly a few feet away, tiny legs marching them one by one as they toil and toil for the good of the colony. A few carry bits of flora on their backs, interspersed with those carrying nothing. Noticeably, though, a group hauls away a still-bloated body of a dog tick, their steps in tandem as they race ahead of the line.
She blinks, looking further. It is green and green and green in this sideways world. The shades of new life rising -soft and nearly pastel- and strong stalks deep emerald where they stand. There is the off green-yellow of the withering plants that melds with the rich brown of the earth, the pasty almost-teal of creeping vines, and faded off-white green hue of the fuzzier breeds. She follows the colors as her body sings a cacophony of pain, eye swimming until it reaches an unnatural shade of khaki, drawing her gaze up and over from the dirt. It trails to an overtly red speckled beige, the color of sunburnt throat skin, and a face partially shaded by a hand.
For a moment, she thinks that it looks like the body across from hers is leaning against the earth, standing straight upward and using the world like the corner of a building at a crosswalk.
The light is all wrong, though, and beyond the body, she registers treetops. Beyond that, a skyline going all the wrong way.
She blinks.
Winks.
Winces.
“Wh…” she rasps, forgetting the sounds of the words, the shape of it tumbling in her mouth.
“Just two pals looking at the sky,” the body says. “No need for crowds or noise..”
Maly doesn’t really understand the words coming out of Rick’s mouth, spoken in a low sort of matter-of-fact tone. All those things he just described register as...well. There’s a squirming in her gut that resounds with the pounding in her head, unwanted and unhelpful. Those things sound undesirable.
She stares at him, uncomprehendingly.
He looks away, toward the flat blue sky, unheeding of the way rocks dig into is back as they dig into hers, or the itch of the grass against his skin. He just breathes quietly, and she notices for the first time the beard is gone from his face. It tames his look, somehow, but it does not soften it.
“Good rows you put in,” he comments lightly.
Maly moves her head slightly, and the world sloshes a bit in response. There’s a somewhat queasy feeling in her belly, and her palms throb like the swollen meat on her face. The rustle of her own head against the ground is thunderous in her ears, and she winces again, which draws the skin on her face tight, causing it to throb more.
It’s hot, she registers. In the direct light of the sun, it should be hotter, but her skin is tight and dry and her brain can’t seem to work out why she thinks that.
“Think you might need to slow down though, Miss Maly,” he states offhandedly in that same, unjudging tone.
Maly blinks.
Winks.
Winces.
A set of footsteps -a rhythmic two-two step- fills her ears alongside a quiet snuffling. She pries her stiff lid open and shifts her eye to her side, where the speckled eyes and perked ears of Meat-sac stare at her own.
The mutt makes its way over, and she’s too tired to move as it leans over her. Hot and rancid breath washes over her face as it huffs at her a few times, moisture tacky against her too dry skin. The scent of it is fetid and sour, an acid burnt over rotting flesh and pure canine saliva. She lifts a hand to shove it away, but her aim is off by a mile, and her weeping palms hit nothing but air before they land in an agonizing way on the prickly blades of grass.
Unwanted, a hiss escapes her cracking lips.
Meat-sac licks her face.
That too, hurts.
“Can you stand?”
Maly thinks of her legs, stiff as boards beneath her. She thinks she can will them into momentum. She can tuck her toes and throw herself forward, use the weight of her upper body to haul the rest if something comes and she needs to run.
She can do it, she thinks.
She needs to do it.
For a moment there is only the ringing in her ears, the too-loud crunch of dirt and plant beneath her head as she rolls it into place. Her hand spasms on the ground, stuck in the shape of some sort of claw.
She can get up. She can walk.
The world swims. It’s so hot.
There’s more noise to her side, a ruffling of grass, quick and alarmed. Meat-sac tenses over her, suddenly alarmed.
“Maly?”
Maly stares at the sky above her, an endless blue. A few puffs of white swim through it like fresh-picked cotton run through a gin and stretched between two hands.
There’s a sound to her side, a quick ruffling of clothes and grass that she hears but does not see. The clouds, impossibly high above her, seem to drift lazily in a hypnotic dance. She focuses on the way they seem to blur in and out of focus until Rick’s face blocks them out completely.
“Hey, hey, Maly. You still there?”
She is, of course. She’s here on the ground, dry and hot and she feels like her weighted stone bones are breaking under her skin, so close to setting her drifting.
She feels something touch her hand, and with great effort, she looks down at it. Rick has… pinched her.
The skin remains tented, puckered upward even though his fingers aren’t holding it there.
She squints her one good eye at it, something squirming in her throbbing head. She’s hot and dry and she hurts. Her skin is tenting. These are variables and she needs to plug them into an equation but she can’t remember the formula.
“That’s not good.”
There’s something different about the way he sounds now. Not just the volume -in and out of focus like the clouds- but there’s a pressure, as if he’s forcing a lot of tone through a filter of calm.
“No,” She agrees.
A hot rush of air floods over her, the sound of a heavy sigh, and Rick’s blotchy red-skinned face floats into view as he blocks her view of clouds. They stare at each other for what seems to be a long, long moment.
His eyes, she thinks, are see-through. She can see the sky behind them: a vivid blue only interrupted by the tiny black dots that make his pupils.
“Maly,”
He pauses, looking to the side, then back at the ground. To the prickly sharp grass and too-hot earth cradling her.
“Do you know what heatstroke is?”
Heat stroke, Maly thinks, the words a soft tumble of syllables in her head (Hh-eEE-T Ss-T-ro-K). She knows it. Like a fuzzy, biting memory nudging at the back of her brain. She feels the ghost of her mothers half-fingers drawing water trails across her brow, hear a half murmur as her father takes the bumbling truck down a busty road toward the hospital.
“Yes.”
“Yes?” Rick asks.
“Yes.”
Rick stares.
And Maly… thinks. Thinks she has to move. She can do it. She has to… get water. To get… salt. And…
...Rick’s head must be empty, she realizes, if she can see the sky through it.
“Riiiiick,” Maly tries, but her tongue is thick and clumsy, saliva like paste in her mouth. The middle sound hovers too long in the hollow of her palate, rolling before she can cut it off. Her hand raises a scant inch or two above the ground -heavy as lead- before it falls. Starbursts of white flicker in her vision as the weeping blisters are stabbed with grass and stone.
The sky stares back at her, patient.
One by one, Maly sorts through the pieces she knows. It’s hard, so hard, to find them in the heat licking over her body. She’s hot, too hot. Her hands are open wounds, full of dirt; Her skin is tenting, face throbbing, and she needs water. Lots of it. Cold water, on her hands and neck and armpits. Clean water.
Her gut squirms like it’s full of parasites.
She is terrified.
(She wanted people, right? )
"I nnnneed... shower," she conffeses.
The passive blue sky stares down, and she winces past the throbbing in her head. Her hand raises again, reaching past those first few inches.
Slowly, another reaches down to take it.
Rick is so, so slow as he reaches to her wrist, his fingers wrapping over her wrist almost time and a half. His skin is rough but cool, and she wails wordlessly as every bone in her body tries to shatter when he cautiously pulls her upward.
Meatsack skitters at the sound, legs scrabbling across the grass, eyes narrowed and Maly breathes through the thick spit in her mouth, feeling her heartbeat in her forehead and fingertips. She tries to clear her head, to focus, shifting her eyes toward the buildings that seem forever away.
Maly Blinks.
Winks.
Winces.
And steps toward them, using the empty-headed sky for balance every grueling inch of the way.